Human Rights Abuses

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government on Friday welcomed apparent progress in 'round table' talks in Ukraine but said international monitors had evidence of grave human rights abuses by pro-Russian groups in annexed Crimea and in the east of the country. Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said the German chancellor was glad that talks would continue this weekend in the east Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. But he said Berlin was very concerned by an OSCE report...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia vowed on Wednesday to retaliate against what it called "unfounded" U.S. sanctions imposed a day earlier on 12 Russians for human rights abuses, including allegedly denying medical care to a whistleblowing lawyer who died in a Russian prison. The United States did not link the sanctions - which expand a list of individuals targeted in 2012 over lawyer Sergei Magnitsky's death - to those imposed by Washington this year over Moscow's annexation...

* Bougainville residents sued over activity linked to mine * 9th Circuit rules after top U.S. court narrows law's reach By Jonathan Stempel June 28 (Reuters) - Benefiting from a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Rio Tinto Plc has won the dismissal of a nearly 13-year-old U.S. lawsuit accusing the Anglo-Australian mining company of complicity in human rights abuses on the South Pacific island of Bougainville. Friday's ruling by a majority of an...

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government on Friday welcomed apparent progress in 'round table' talks in Ukraine but said international monitors had evidence of grave human rights abuses by pro-Russian groups in annexed Crimea and in the east of the country. Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said the German chancellor was glad that talks would continue this weekend in the east Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. But he said Berlin was very concerned by an OSCE report...

A contra military tribunal has concluded that six Nicaraguan guerrillas committed torture or other human-rights abuses and has ordered their expulsion from the rebel movement. Bosco Matamoros, a contra spokesman, said Sunday that two of the guerrillas had been found guilty of murder. In addition, he said, the intelligence chief for the entire contra army was found guilty of covering up a murder. The court's decision was issued Friday in Honduras by the tribunal, composed of...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities should investigate the country's powerful spy agency for human rights abuses against journalists following a spate of attacks on leading reporters, London-based Amnesty International said in a report published on Wednesday. The report sheds light on the threat it says the country's media faces, including from political parties, Islamist insurgents and its own intelligence agencies. At least 34 journalists...

Bolingbrook resident Raj Koul was a student in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir when Islamic extremists launched an ethnic cleansing campaign against Hindus. As mobs in the Muslim-majority state ransacked homes and killed residents, someone pasted a poster on the Kouls' door ordering them to leave within 24 hours, the United Airlines project manager says. After the family fled in 1990, they learned that a relative had been murdered. Koul hears echoes of his experiences in a report from the...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council renewed a U.N. peacekeeping mission in the disputed North African territory of Western Sahara for another year on Tuesday, and urged all sides to respect human rights, but it did not call for the United Nations to monitor abuses as rights groups have advocated. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, like the rights advocacy groups, has called for the U.N. peacekeeping mission, known as MINURSO, to monitor and...

President Olusegun Obasanjo inaugurated a panel on Monday to investigate human-rights abuses during 15 years of military rule. "We want to reconcile all those who feel alienated by past political events, heal wounds inflicted on our people and restore harmony in our country," Obasanjo told the eight-member Human Rights Investigation Panel. The board is to investigate all human-rights abuses and especially mysterious deaths and assassinations since Nigeria's last civilian...

RIYADH (Reuters) - Human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia were not raised in talks between U.S. President Barack Obama and King Abdullah on Friday, a U.S. official said. "Today, given the extent of time they spent on Iran and Syria, they didn't get to a number of issues, and it wasn't just human rights," the official said. The official added that Obama on Saturday would present a State Department Woman of Courage Award to a Saudi woman fighting domestic violence. ...

Three cheers for Secretary of State Warren Christopher. On their home ground, he stood nose-to-nose with the autocrats running China, denouncing their human rights abuses and threatening U.S. countermeasures if they don't clean up their act. While it's too soon for the Clinton administration or Amnesty International to declare a clear-cut victory for humanity and justice, Christopher deserves international respect for his forthright stance....

By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS, March 7 (Reuters) - The United Nations voiced concern on Friday about plans by regional authorities in Crimea to hold a referendum on whether to secede from Ukraine and join Russia and warned against decisions being taken "in the heat of the moment. " The east-west confrontation sparked by the overthrow last month of President Viktor Yanukovich after violent protests in Kiev escalated on Thursday when...

Zimbabwean church leaders demonstrated against repression and human rights abuses in their troubled country, protesting in the stadium where Australia and Zimbabwe were playing a World Cup cricket match. The group of about 20 clergy gathered among the spectators and held banners with the name of their group, "Christians Together for Justice and Peace." President Robert Mugabe has been accused of human rights abuses that have plunged the country into turmoil. The group consists of...

PARIS (Reuters) - President Francois Hollande telephoned the king of Morocco to try to calm a rare diplomatic row between France and its former colony about allegations of human rights abuses. In one of two incidents that upset Rabat, French police went to the Moroccan embassy in Paris seeking to question the head of the domestic intelligence over torture allegations, following lawsuits filed against him in France by Moroccan activists. Rabat summoned the French...

President Robert Mugabe's office in Harare on Sunday labeled as a "non-event" a $400 million lawsuit filed in the United States accusing the Zimbabwean leader of violence and human rights abuses. Mugabe was served with the suit Thursday as he entered a church in New York's Harlem before delivering a speech there. He had been attending the UN Millennium Summit in New York. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, alleges that Mugabe orchestrated violence and is responsible...

By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON, Dec 11 (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers are considering legislation to deny visas to Ukrainian officials or freeze their U.S. assets if there is an escalation of violence against anti-government demonstrators. Both Democrats and Republicans have condemned harsh measures during weeks of protests by hundreds of thousands of people protesting President Viktor Yanukovich's decision to scrap a trade deal with the European...

Students from all over the world are risking their lives by protesting against such things as oppressive governments, human-rights abuses, lack of educational opportunities and a number of other vital issues. American students, meanwhile, protest the fact that they can't get a Bud Light after 2 a.m. What a sad commentary on our country.

Every once in a very great while, we get these people who rise above the confines of self. Nelson Mandela, who died on Thursday at the age of 95, was one of those. He navigated his life by the polestar not of self, but of freedom and in so doing, became the founding father of a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal. It is not that he was a perfect man. "In real life," he once wrote, "we deal, not with gods, but with ordinary...

MADRID (Reuters) - Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin and ex prime minister Li Peng could face arrest when travelling abroad over allegations they committed genocide in Tibet, a Spanish court ruled on Tuesday, in a case Beijing has dismissed as absurd. Two Tibetan support groups and a monk with Spanish nationality brought the case against the former leaders in 2006 using Spanish law, which allows suspects to be tried for human rights abuses committed abroad when...